Kisin’s points

Visiting foreign dignitaries are invariably and immediately asked, “What do you think of Australia?” Here’s what one famous Russian-British podcaster had to say

The tragedy of my career is that I say obvious things that everyone knows and am lavished with entirely unmerited praise in response. It pains me to point this out but if Konstantin Kisin has been invited to give a series of talks in your country, all is not well. 
Konstantin Kisin, 12/3/24

I was a late podcast adopter, but I belatedly took a deep dive into that strange world around half a decade ago. I soon discovered two obscure British stand-ups who had started their own YouTube show called Triggernometry.

The podcast initially had bare-bones production values and the hosts obviously didn’t quite know what they were doing. But I found the content interesting enough to keep coming back. In 2018, one of the podcast’s hosts rocketed to minor celebrity after arcing up on Twitter over being asked to sign a “behavioural agreement” to refrain from racism, sexism, classism, ageism, homophobia, biphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia (or theophobia of any form) and atheophobia while performing at a charity event organised by uni students.

As usually turns out to be the case, the facts of this ‘political correctness gone mad’ brouhaha turned out to be a little less straightforward than initially presented.

Comedians regularly agree to tone down their material in certain contexts. It also came out that Kisin had previously signed at least one similar ‘behavioural agreement’ without raising a fuss. And, finally, it appears the ridiculous constraints were the handiwork of a few overzealous student activists rather than anyone in a position of authority.

But Kisin was, as we say in the business, good talent – highly intelligent, articulate, self-possessed yet willing to be combative, reasonably photogenic and relatively youthful. There was also the man-bites-dog spectacle of a self-described dark-skinned Russian migrant with Jewish ancestry destroying (with facts and logic) the blame-everything-on-whitey-especially-those-working-class-whites-who’ve-been-absolutely-killing-it-in-recent-decades strand of progressive thinking that’s become near-hegemonic in elite circles. (I fear it will progress over from ‘near’ to ‘absolutely’ hegemonic at around 8-9pm on November 5 now Biden is locked in as the Democrat candidate.)

Inevitably, Kisin was elevated to ‘anti-woke talking head’ status in the British media and, soon thereafter, the American podcasting scene. In 2022, he released a best-selling book comparing and contrasting – but mainly just comparing – contemporary Western hyperliberalism with old-school Soviet Communism. He went supernova with his contribution to an Oxford Union student debate on the motion “Woke Culture has gone too far”. His speech, delivered at the start of 2023, achieved Rich Men North of Richmond-like virality.

Kisin is spending increasing amounts of time in the US. He’s unabashedly ambitious, so he’ll probably move there soon, possibly without his current ‘straight man’ partner. (Comedy partnerships – hell, creative partnerships of any kind – are notoriously difficult to maintain and it can’t have escaped either party’s attention that only one of them has become globally famous.)

But that’s all background. I don’t want to comment on any of the broader claims Konstantin Kisin has made. I simply want to analyse his analysis of a subject I know far more about than he does – Australia.

Let me run through his claims – which can be found in their full context here – and, as is now traditional, add my commentary.

An outsider’s persepective
A couple of weeks ago, I walked up the road at lunchtime to the Hogwartian splendour of Sydney University’s Great Hall. Tony Abbott, a Sydney Uni alum (like a disproportionate number of Australian PMs), began his opening remarks by holding forth on the university’s motto, which, as Clive James (another alum) noted, should be translated from the Latin as “Sydney University is really Oxford or Cambridge laterally displaced approximately 12,000 miles.”

Kisin then took the stage and made a series of observations, many of which he repeated in a post-tour wrap-up. (His Substack is

Konstantin Kisin

.)

You can find the speech I attended here and his most recent Substack post (“Can Australia Endure the Woke Onslaught?”) here.

Anyway, these are Kisin’s observations:

1)Australia remains a paradise, at least compared to the UK and US. But there’s no cause for complacency

Kisin: This is the bad news for Australia: it appears to have been infected with the same mind virus as the rest of the Anglosphere… This is the good news: as things stand, Australia’s biggest challenge is not extremism, it is apathy born of comfort. Life here is good and the differences to the rest of the Anglosphere are remarkable.

My verdict: Kisin’s on the money. Those on both the Left and Right frequently assume Australia functions much like the US and that the same hot-button issues that “get out the base” in the US will resonate down under.

Sometimes they do, but while Australia shares many similarities with its Anglosphere cousins, it also boasts many distinct features. To take just one illustrative example, the Brits invented socialised healthcare and even Thatcher didn’t dare mess with it. In contrast, the Americans are famously sceptical of socialised healthcare. As is often the case, we Australians fall in between the free market-loving Yanks and Big Government-loving Brits/Europeans. (Medicare provides nominally free healthcare but involves significant outlays for gap fees, medications, ambulance rides, etc.)    

As the child of a ten-pound Pom, I’m used to English people expressing jaw-dropping amazement about the standard of living on offer in Australia, even to those doing blue-collar jobs. Kisin doesn’t disappoint on this front, noting:

Unlike major American and increasingly British cities, the streets and parks here are not overrun with people suffering from the scourges of addiction, homelessness and crime. Sydney and Melbourne ranked among the top 10 safest cities in the world in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Safe Cities Index 2021 and as the third and fourth most liveable cities in the world according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index 2023.

With mining, drilling and agriculture responsible for over 70% of the country’s exports, Australia has highly paid jobs for those outside the laptop class. A mine truck driver can earn over  A$130,000 a year (over £69,000), while going down into the mine can bring as much as A$250,000 (£130,000). I know many lawyers, senior doctors and other professionals in London who can only dream of such earnings. Indeed, a doctor friend doubled her salary the day she moved here from the UK.  

2)Australians aren’t (yet) that polarised

Kisin: While many will tell you that political polarisation is the worst it’s ever been, they’ll often do so while sitting around a table with people of different political viewpoints.

My verdict: Once again, Kisin's take is surprisingly acute for someone who only spent a short time here. I suspect partisans on both the Left and Right find the notion of Australia being hyperpolarised a little bit thrilling, but my impression is that partisan divides are considerably narrower here than elsewhere. Unusually, Australia has compulsory voting, which incentives centrism. I’d argue that preferential voting also has a civilising effect, partly because it gives everyone a sense their vote matters, even if they don’t vote for the centre-left or centre-right parties that form governments.

The American population has long been self-segregating into Republican/Red State and Democrat/Blue State-City tribes, with relations between the two blocs becoming ever frostier. (American parents used to fret about their children marrying someone of a different race or religion; now they worry about them partnering with someone with the wrong politics.)

Things are nowhere near that dire down under. Also, there’s no Antipodean equivalent to the helot revolts we saw in the US and the UK in 2016.

Though Kisin arguably tries to shoehorn the defeat of the Voice into that category:

On cultural issues too, while apathy is how woke activists are able to continue hollowing out the country’s institutions, when forced to step away from the barbie and vote in the Aboriginal Voice Referendum last year, ordinary Australians made their feelings clear. Fronted by the courageous Jacinta Price, the “No” campaign overturned a one-sided onslaught from the country’s media, corporate and political elite, with 60% voting against embedding identity politics in the Constitution.   

3)The UK is now reaping the whirlwind of mass immigration. Australians should take note.

Kisin: When I came to Britain in the mid-1990s, the British public were entirely unconcerned about immigration, with just 3% describing it as a major issue in the year I came. Back in the early 1990s, net migration was running at about 54,000 people... Despite the popular uprising that we call Brexit, the latest net migration figures up to June 2023 were 672,000... The result? Sectarian clashes in major British cities. Parliament abandoning its own rules to appease Islamists and rising ethnic tensions… It seems to me that Australia is in danger of making many of the same mistakes. In the year ending 30 June 2023, legal migration contributed a net gain of 518,000 people to the country's population. This is a record level and for a country of 26 million people, this is a higher level of immigration than even in the UK.

My verdict: Corporate and cultural elites have put the mass migration pedal to the metal in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US in recent times and long portrayed anyone – including recently arrived migrants – who objected as an evil and embittered racist.

Given his background, it’s challenging to portray Kisin as a crypto white nationalist. Most of his critics seem to settle for implying he’s a sinister reactionary. He self-identifies as being “politically non-binary” and does advocate some left-wing positions. At the talk I attended, Kisin was perfectly willing to risk losing the crowd by arguing ‘woke’ younger generations did have some legitimate grievances, not least ridiculously unaffordable housing markets.  

Ending on a high note
I’d always assumed Coalition supporters were much less gloomy than their ALP/Green-voting counterparts.

Given the Right’s many victories, both ideological and electoral, over the last four decades, you’d think members of the Sydney University Conservative Club would have plenty to smile about. Also, when they’re not boasting about being better looking than their ideological foes, those on the Right often highlight the greater happiness levels of conservatives.

But judging by the hour I spent with the Young (and some old) Liberals in the Great Hall, this is not the case. Many of those who participated in the Q&A session appeared convinced Western Civilisation was in an advanced state of collapse. Using the kind of language that would make John Howard blush, one questioner captured the vibe in the room by asking, “Are we fucked?”

Whatever you think of them, it’s worth contemplating both Abbott’s and Kisin’s responses. (You can find the exchange here at the 44-minute mark.)

Abbott: Someone said, “Even if it is too late, we have to act as if it is not.”

Kisin: None of us knows the future, and making predictions about the future is a very bad idea generally. But I think we have to recognise that we can no longer pretend we haven’t got a problem. The West has spent the ‘End of History’ period, from 1991, with its head – to reciprocate your bluntness – firmly up its arse. And we have to extract it, look around, and realise this is a civilisational moment, and the rest depends on us.

Update: The Australian has today republished the Substack post I refer to above. If you have a subscription, you can find both the article and some interesting comments on it here.